The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion

WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion By George Will Sunday, January 6, 2008 Send an email to George Will Email It Print It Take Action Read Article & Comments (393) Trackbacks Post Your Comments

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee removes his microphone after a interview at a hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire, January 4, 2008. Mike Huckabee's surprising victory in Iowa on Thursday turned the Republican race for U.S. president upside down, but his path to the party's presidential nomination was far from certain. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (UNITED STATES) Related Media:

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

Huckabee told heavily subsidized Iowa -- Washington's ethanol enthusiasm has farm values and incomes soaring -- that Americans striving to rise are "pushed down every time they try by their own government." Edwards, synthetic candidate of theatrical bitterness on behalf of America's crushed, groaning majority, says the rich have an "iron-fisted grip" on democracy and a "stranglehold" on the economy. Strangely, these fists have imposed a tax code that makes the top 1 percent of earners pay 39 percent of all income tax revenues, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, and the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent.

According to Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today -- "I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally." Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: "In my family, 'summer' was never a verb." Nixon, who maundered about his parents' privations and wife's cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Speaking of delusions, Edwards seems unaware that the world market sets the price of oil. He says a $100-a-barrel price is evidence of -- surging demand in India and China? unrest in Nigeria's oil fields? No, "corporate greed." That is Edwards' explanation of every unpleasantness. Mitt Romney's versatility of conviction, although it repelled Iowans, has been a modest makeover compared to Edwards' personality transplant. The sunny Southerner of 2004 has become the angry paladin of the suffering multitudes, to whom he shouts: "Treat these people the way they treat you!" Presumably he means treat "the rich" badly -- an odious exhortation to one portion of Americans, regarding another.

Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington's culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

The way to achieve Edwards' and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

Back when the "other faction" thought it's media could stuff Giuliani down our throats, we were told time and again how we had to set aside our quaint little beliefs about the sanctity of life and marriage as you scolded us for our "intolerance" of "alternative lifestyles". Well, Mr. Will, when the alternatives offered to us are in the form of Rudy McRomney who (no matter what he says now) is not pro-life and who still thinks the radical gay agenda is "chic", you should have expected the "fusion" to end. It was you, not us, who flushed the coalition. Aside from Mr. Huckabee, there is not one pro-life candidate running for President right now. And, as we are the majority of voters in the GOP, watch what happens to your Georgetown cocktail circuit.
4 posted on 01/06/2008 10:04:25 AM PST by advance_copy

If they don't come up with a plan to make middle class family life more affordable, they can forget about any "fusion" dynasties. No civilization survives the loss of its middle class or normal family life. Some of these pundits spend too much time inside-the-beltway indulging Rudy fantasies and other delusions. With their second and third wives, girlfriends, and mistresses.

The weaknesses in the Rudy formula were going to be exploited by somebody. That's a no-brainer. George Will should be smart enough to understand that. Maybe he hasn't tallied the math for middle class family expenses in housing, education, or gasoline very recently.

Reagan was a much better candidate than Rudy or Romney. His pro-life positions a very integral part of the fusionist "Reagan coalition" that solidified the conservative movement.

Tax cuts on capital agains alone do not deliver "fusionist" victories. The GOP needs pro-life Evangelicals and Catholics to do that. And they need a good cross section of the middle class. Giuliani's candidacy can't deliver that. A winning GOP candidate needs support outside of the Chevy Chase and Georgetown cocktail circuit.

Back to PoliSci 101 for Mr. Will.

Ronald Reagan, President of the United States (1981-1989)

1980: landslide (44 states, 489 electoral votes) Reagan's position: pro-life

1984: landslide (49 states, 525 electoral votes) Reagan's position: pro-life

In a way, it was appropriate the he wasn’t in the debate. None of the other candidates deserve to be on the same stage with this 24K gold conservative patriot.
***Well said. Moving into New Hampshire, the only republicans who have more delegates than Duncan Hunter are Romney and Thompson. No delegates were actually selected in Iowa.

The New Hampshire GOP withdrew its sponsorship of yesterday’s debate.

According to this article, there were no delegates selected in Iowa.

First G.O.P. Delegate Goes to Romney (Romney, Hunter Leading in WY)
New York Times ^ | January 5, 2008 | MEAD GRUVER
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05cnd-wyoming.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1199563235-58hBRHoYXSVDHcyr25G/Fw&oref=slogin

“Wyoming chose the first 12 delegates of 2008 at 12 separate county conventions. Iowa Republicans, who have 40 delegates, conducted a straw poll but elected no convention delegates Thursday.”

So, that means that Romney has the most delegates (8), Fred has 3 and Hunter has 1, going into New Hampshire. I see now that Hunter was wise not to campaign in Iowa, and where he did choose to campaign he drew blood. You get more bang for the buck with Hunter.

The fact that he’s being excluded from New Hampshire debates is probably a historical first. This is a conservative website and Hunter is a conservative candidate. The GOP is late in waking up to the fact that the media hates conservatives.

Basically, it’s a wide open race, with the lead changing on a weekly basis. Might as well support the truest conservative, Hunter.

The Efficacy Of Prediction Markets The Liberty Papers ^ |
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1922961/posts

According to Intrade, the winner of the December 12th GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts

Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts

Yes, being in the House is a handicap. But Obama is now the leading Demonrat candidate, and his whole career is: 1) backbencher in IL legislature and 2) a completely undistinguished 1/2 term in the Senate. A single speech before the last Demon convention put him on the map. Most people wouldn’t know Fred Thompson either, except for his acting career. Hardly anyone outside AR knew who Huckabee was. Jimmah Carter and Bill Clinton were obscure Southern governors, also.

Yeah, but Hunter doesn't have the advantage of being a Wonder Negro.

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